The popular open source software company, Mozilla, has officially released the latest version of its well-known internet browser Firefox, bundling the program with 17 fixes to the original security system.

Firefox 24 was released to the public earlier today and is downloadable from the Mozilla website now. This version of the software introduces a host of security fixes that shore up the program against threats of varying degrees. Many of the issues that have been targeted by this iteration are classified by Mozilla as Critical. According to the software outfit, a Critical threat is a “Vulnerability [that] can be used to run attacker code and install software, requiring no user interaction beyond normal browsing”.

10 of the 17 fixes are classified as High or Moderate, and those require at least some human interaction in order to be a danger.

You never know what precious data a malicious hacker might be after

A number of the patches that have helped to make this update as secure as it can be have been attributed to one of the security researchers who work for Mozilla, by name of Nils.

“Security researcher Nils reported two potentially exploitable memory corruption bugs involving scrolling. The first was a use-after-free condition due to scrolling an image document,” Mozilla reported in the security advisory that accompanied this update.

KitGuru Says: Hopefully this latest version of Firefox will put even more people off of creating malicious programs, and even if it doesn't then at least a number of other more dastardly security threats have been dealt with. Does this added security give the browser any major advantage over Chrome or Opera though? Which browser do you guys think is the best?

Become a Patron!